The Last Ride

I thought the Holden plant in Australia was going to keep building the GTO through August, as they did last year, but apparently I was wrong. The Australian media reported that on June 7th, the last Pontiac GTO — clad in Spice Red metallic — rolled off the assembly line at 9:37 pm. Unlike the last Holden Monaro, which was produced early this year, there was very little fanfare, just a group photo with some of the line workers next to the final historic vehicle.

Overall production figures for the GTO were way up this model year, at just over 14,000 — that’s 3,000 more than the 2005 model. Nearly 10,000 of those units were built between January and June alone!

GM still plans to bring the GTO back into production in the 2008 or ’09 model year, most likely based on Holden’s next-generation 2007 Commodore platform. While engineered by Holden, it may actually be produced here in the United States as the majority of the Aussie coupes were sold here. I hear tell that there may also be a rear-drive, performance-oriented Buick coming out of the same package deal (a new Grand National, anyone?).

But as GM’s plans can change with the direction of the wind, current GTO owners should savor what they have today — one of the finest grand touring coupes ever built, and one of the performance values of our time.

2 thoughts on “The Last Ride”

Wow, that Spice Red looks pretty fine based on this pic. Noticed that black interior is the only available color. Have you seen this, and what is your opinion? I know it’s metalic, but any similarity to the blood red SHO I had?
P.S. – Too bad about the deleted wire harness for the gauge pod. It’s a wicked addition to your car!

Spice Red is a nice color. It’s definitely darker than your SHO; in fact it is more like a true candy-apple red, similar to what was offered on the WS6 but a lot less purple.

Here’s a picture of a Spice Red GTO with a Torrid Red visible next to it (Torrid Red is a bright red like your WS6):

And here’s a shot of Spice Red as seen under overcast skies:

It’s a very deep, rich color with a sophisticated appearance. And yes, the only interior color available with it is black. The gauge faces on the instrument panel are gray.

Yeah, definitely bad news on the gauge pod harness deletion — there were several people on the GTO message board a couple months back who bought gauge pods and then discovered they had no way to hook them up to their new cars!